How has John Terry spent £145,000 on haircuts?

How John Terry has spent a fortune on haircuts - for him and his mates

Chelsea's John Terry is known for all sorts of things both on and off the football pitch, but he's hardly exactly gained a reputation for his fashionable and flamboyant haircuts (aside from an interesting style he dabbled with at the end of last year). Yet revelations from his hairdresser this week show that over the past eight years he must have forked out £145,000 at the barbers. He's done it in a somewhat unusual way.

Leo Bancroft, his hairdresser, revealed on Tumblr that Terry has been paying for every member of the Chelsea team - and the back room staff - to have their hair cut for eight years.

The Hairdressers Journal quotes him as saying he pops down to Stamford Bridge, or the boys come into the salon. A number of them go in for a trim before games and "It has almost become a prematch ritual."

Bancoft is something of a celebrity hairdresser from well-heeled Weybridge in Surrey, so a haircut from him doesn't come cheap. He charges £55 for a men's haircut - even a short-back-and-sides like Terry's. According to the Sun, that comes to around £2,000 every six weeks - which adds up to a fraction under £145,000 over eight years.

Expensive haircuts

For a man on £150,000 a week (plus bonuses), splashing out £2,000 every six weeks is small potatoes. It's hardly enough to keep the average footballer's supercars in petrol.

In the realm of pricey haircuts, this is a drop in the ocean too. The Guinness World Records people have the priciest haircut listed as costing £8,000 and being done by Stuart Phillips at his salon in Covent Garden. His customer was Beverley Lateo of Pisa in Italy, who turned to Phillips after discovering that there wasn't a single hairdresser in Italy who could do the job to her standards. The price included a limo to and from the airport, a champagne lunch, a bunch of personalised hair products and treatments - as well as the haircut.

Unsurprisingly the footballer who holds the record for the most expensive haircut is David Beckham. He was reportedly required to cut and soften his hair to a specific standard as part of the deal when he became the face (and hair) of Brylcreem - and the final bill came to $6,000. He was said to have eventually lost the contract after shaving his head.